


Cut the Kids in Half

by Doriath



Category: Victorious (TV)
Genre: Amputation, And All This Horror Happens to Minors, Assault, Cavity Search, Death by Stoning, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 09:28:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23848954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doriath/pseuds/Doriath
Summary: Another look at the events of Locked Up, with much more serious consequences for being imprisoned in a war-torn nation. It does not go well for them.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Cut the Kids in Half

**Author's Note:**

> This little fic is rather unpleasant. It came about after discussions of how much worse their ordeal would have been, were this not a Nickelodeon show. I tried to tag everything that I thought needed tagging, but if I overlooked something that you feel should have been tagged, please let me know and I will add it.
> 
> Also, I'm aware that Robbie is on the girl's side in the episode, but he is with the boys here.
> 
> Title from the song 'Morning Bell' by Radiohead.

The soldiers are rough and handsy as they drag Tori to a rusty old pickup. They throw her into the truck bed and handcuff her to a bar. It's an uncomfortable ride to the prison.

Prison! For a shoe malfunction! She frantically looks for possible escapes at every turn, but to no avail. Eventually, she finds herself in a cold white room, with shower heads. She is told to strip.

There are four guards present. All of them are men.

"No way," she snaps at first.

"We can take clothes from you," one of the guards says, stepping toward her.

"No, no," she repeats, trying to be less combative. "Just…can I have some privacy?"

The guards laugh. "Privacy? This is prison. Take off your clothes. We must search you for contraband."

"But I don't have anything! Can I at least have female guards?"

They laugh at her again. "There are no female guards."

The lead guard seems to be getting impatient then. "Take off your clothes. Now."

Tori gulps and starts to obey, slowly removing her shirt. "Someone should call the American embassy," she says.

"Your friends can. You must still undress."

She nods, hands shaking, and slides her pants off. She is standing in the freezing room in just her bra and panties.

The guards motion for her to continue.

"What? No, this is enough. You can see I don't have anything."

One guard pulls on a latex glove. He snaps it on his wrist and Tori flinches, her eyes filled with tears. "Please, it was just an accident. It was a shoe malfunction. I didn't mean--"

One guard sighs loudly and steps toward her. She tries to move away from him, but another guard steps up. They grab her and hold her in place. She squirms against them, but to no avail. A third guard unhooks her bra and slides her panties down.

They turn her around and the guard with the glove tells her to spread her legs.

* * *

When it's over, they make her stand under a cold shower. She is shaking so badly and she can't stop crying. It seems to go on forever before the water stops and she is ordered out of the shower room and given a small towel and folded prison jumpsuit.

She dries off and redresses as fast as she can.

She thinks this is the worst day of her life.

It's not.

* * *

She is shoved into a cell with six other women. There are two twin cots and a toilet bowl.

She huddles in a corner, hugging her knees to her chest and staring at the floor.

Four years. She has been sentenced to four years in this place.

After three days, she receives a letter from Trina claiming they were doing everything they could—they'd called home, the embassy, lawyers. She just had to sit tight, but it would be OK.

At least none of the prisoners bother her. Apparently, being the 'psycho girl who stabbed the chancellor in the eye' gives her some street cred, both in her cell and in the yard.

She imagines it's Sikowitz's most intense drive-by acting exercise ever and tries her best to act tough.

It seems to work.

But at night, when she thinks her cellmates have gone to sleep, she cries and prays. She's never really prayed before, but it's all she can think to do now.

* * *

Then one day when the cell doors clang open and the prisoners file out to the yard, she is met by all of her friends. They are donning the orange jumpsuits too.

Robbie killed the chancellor's octopus, they explain.

Sikowitz manages to escape, but the rest of them are brought to the prison.

Trina is hysterical and grabs Tori in a tight hug. Tori hugs her back, weakly. Jade's eyes are downcast and Cat…well, Cat doesn’t seem fazed much.

On the other side of the fence, Beck looks annoyed and Robbie is visibly terrified. Andre has a faraway look in his eyes. He looks gaunt and she almost bursts into tears at the sight of him. He needs a doctor for that moth bite, not that stupid child with his lulu pops.

"...the State Department can't get us out of jail. And no one's flying into the country right now. We were, like, the last flight in before everything shut down," Trina is sobbing.

Tori almost asks if she talked to their parents, but doesn't. She and her friends may have been morons not to do more research on Yerba before coming here, but her parents watch the news every night. They had to know what sort of disaster this place was and they let them come anyway. Her dad even told her to leave Trina behind.

Tori frowns and gives Trina a quick squeeze.

Cat skips off. Jade snaps at her not to, but the redhead ignores her completely.

Cat makes friends in prison quick. She's joined a gang after twenty minutes in the yard.

The rest of them make no effort to interact with the other prisoners, aside from a brief encounter with Sheeba, where Jade is nearly demolished by with a 2x4. Tori gets her to stand down easily enough. Sheeba is one of her cell mates.

Cat says the other prisoners think the girls have formed a gang and Tori thinks that's ridiculous. Jade, Trina, and her? A gang? They'd be the lamest gang in here.

Though Tori still has her unique reputation as a seriously deranged and dangerous criminal.

And Trina and Jade can certainly act tough. And Trina has some actual skills to back that up, even.

Tori looks over at Jade.

Jade can't back it up. It’s a façade, with her. She hopes if she makes a big enough scene, if she's mean enough, vicious enough, it will never come to blows. But if it did… Jade West would go down fast. Hell, when the soldiers had carried Tori off, Jade had bailed immediately.

"What?" Jade snaps then, and Tori realizes she's been staring.

"You ran," Tori says, simply. "When they took me, you just…you ran away. Everyone else at least tried…there wasn't anything they could do, but they tried…"

"So? What did you expect? We're not friends. You think I cared that you were getting carried away by soldiers?" Jade's voice is smaller than usual. She started out venomous, but sounds deflated at the end, like even she couldn't believe the words she was saying.

"I thought you'd try, I thought…after everything, I thought that as much as you like to say we aren't friends, I thought when it really mattered, you'd have my back," Tori lets out a bitter half laugh. "I just…I never took you for a coward, but you ran _the second_ things got tense. It's almost funny."

To Tori's surprise, Jade doesn't say anything to that.

"The wicked witch of the West is all bark and no bite, big surprise," Trina chimes in. "I could've told you that. Now we need to figure out how to get out of here. We need to get back to America."

"Yeah, we do," Tori replies. "You guys haven't been sentenced yet, so it might not be as bad though. Maybe you'll be out in a month."

"I'm not leaving you here for four fucking years," Trina snaps.

"We need to come up with a plan," Tori nods. "Something that will get us all home."

* * *

Robbie doesn't understand what they mean by 'playing rocks' and he doesn't figure it out in time. Beck hears the sickening thud and the crunch of bone, turning to see his friend in a huddled mess of blood on the floor, rocks flying at him from a crowd about fifteen feet away.

Beck rushes forward first, running at the group who are throwing the rocks. "Stop!" he yells. But they just laugh and turn their attention to him. He's quicker than Robbie though, and more aware, so he dodges successfully. "Stop it!" he yells again, glancing over his shoulder at Andre, who hasn't moved from where Beck had been standing. He thinks Andre isn't even aware that they are in prison- the moth bite has rendered him nearly catatonic.

"Andre!" Beck calls out anyway, and it seems for half a second that maybe Andre hears him.

Then everything goes black.

* * *

When Beck wakes up later, he can hardly move. He has been dragged back to the cell he shares with Andre and Robbie and four other inmates. His body is aching all over and the sharp pain and bloody stains in the seat of his pants make him grateful he wasn't awake for what they did to him.

"Fluffy boy is awake," a slightly familiar voice.

He can't see in the dark of the cell, but he places it—the man who'd asked him about his hair.

"Good, this will be more fun now, badhi," the man says, voice low, as he moves across the cell toward Beck.

"No," Beck repeats, scrambling to his feet and looking for help. He sees Andre in the corner, but knows that Andre isn't really there. And Robbie…he just now realizes Robbie was never brought back to the cell. "Guards! Guards! Help!" he calls out in desperation.

But no one answers.

All he hears is the laughter of his cell mates as they grab him and force him face down on the bed.

And for the first time in his life, Beck Oliver feels fear.

* * *

Andre's body is cold the next morning. His eyes have glazed over and the angry lump on his neck has started to subside. Too late though.

Beck wonders if Tori's come up with a plan. She's always the one to get them out of these situations…not that they've ever been in a situation like this.

And with both Andre and Robbie gone, Beck isn't sure he wants to be alive anymore anyway.

He hopes the girls are faring better on their side of the prison.

* * *

Jade and Trina are shoved into the same cell as Tori. Cat is with them for all of ten minutes before a guard removes her to another cell. Apparently, her prison gang pals bribed him to move her to their cell.

It doesn’t matter though. Nothing they can do.

The three of them huddle in Tori's corner of the cell, next to the metal bars. Jade is leaning against the metal bars, sitting where Tori had sat the past three nights. Tori sits beside her then and Trina joins them.

"We should take turns sleeping," Trina suggests, her voice fraught.

"None of them have bothered me since I got here," Tori shrugs, but then she sees Sheeba eyeing Jade from across the cell. "As long as people are friendly, it should be fine," she looks to Jade. "Think you can manage?"

Jade doesn't reply, but Tori thinks she can feel the other girl's glare in the darkness.

Several hours pass and eventually it seems everyone in their cell is asleep, except Tori. She listens to the even breathing of those asleep, the cries of sorrow and pain echoing down the hall from other cells. She listens closely, always trying to determine if it's Cat she hears. She doesn't think so and she's relieved, but then, she doesn't know what she could possibly do if it was.

Trina has cried herself to sleep and is resting her head on Tori's shoulder.

Jade's breathing is less relaxed and Tori knows she isn’t asleep.

Tori reaches for her hand and interlocks their fingers. Jade tenses briefly, but doesn’t pull away. Jade's terrified and Tori knows it, already called her out on it…no reason to fight it now. So she doesn't.

Tori smiles for the first time in days.

* * *

In the morning, guards walk by banging their batons on the metal bars to wake everyone up. Everyone groggily gets to their feet.

"Tori Veega," a man with a clipboard says as he stops in front of her cell. "Come with me."

She stands, looking at him, waiting for the door to be opened, but the guard with the keys is just standing there.

"NOW, badhi!" the man with the clipboard yells.

"Oh NOW?!" The other guard scrambles to obey and they take Tori out the cell.

Trina protests loudly and a guard thwacks her on the head with a baton.

"Trina!" Tori calls back, only for the guard to threaten her with his baton as well.

Her sister shrieks, clutching her head and doubling over. Jade grabs onto her to keep her from falling and pulls her back away from the door.

Tori is dragged down a series of hallways until she is finally brought into another filthy room.

Two of the guards lift her onto a wooden table in the middle of the room and she starts kicking and biting and screaming and trying to get free, but they handcuff her hands to either side of it. They cuff one ankle.

"What are you doing?" Tori asks, panic rising in her chest.

"This is the offending foot, badhi?" a guard asks, tapping the shin of her free leg.

"What?"

"You kicked your shoe into the Chancellor's eyeball with this foot, yes?"

"It was a shoe malfunction! It wasn't on purpose, I swear. I would never ever do something like that to someone!"

Another guard approaches with a black cloth and starts tying it around her head, blindfolding her.

"OHMYGODNOPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP PLEASE …"

She feels the cool air on her calf as her pant-leg is rolled up. She feels something tightening around her ankle.

"PLEASE, I'M SORRY, I’M SO SORRY!" she pleads with them. "PLEASE!"

None of them reply to her or even acknowledge her cries.

And then suddenly there's a dull thud and an indescribable searing pain shooting up her leg. Her vision goes white and she passes out.

When she regains consciousness, she is back in the cell, alone. Everyone else is in the yard. She has a cold, wet cloth on her forehead. It's covering her eyes.

She doesn't take it off. She doesn't want to see the gauze-wrapped stump where her foot should be.

Later, when she hears the prisoners returning to the cell, she finally removes the blindfold and climbs out of the cot they'd laid her in. She hobbles over to her corner. Gasping in pain with every movement. She slides down along the wall and tries to pull herself together. She watches the door as the other prisoners file in. It gives her something else to focus on besides the pain.

Trina runs to Tori as soon as she sees her, gasping in shock when she sees what's happened. Tori doesn't say anything. What is there to say? She looks for Jade and prays that Jade didn't run her mouth off in the yard again, without Tori there to look after her.

When Jade appears, it's with a black eye and a fat lip. She limps over to Tori's side. She is trying very hard not to cry.

Tori glares at Sheeba.

Sheeba shakes her head. "This was not me. I stopped it, badhi. Your friend is not so smart."

Jade slumps down next to Tori, eyeing the gauze at the end of her leg.

"Jade," Tori turns to her.

"I was just trying to get Cat back. Her whole gang jumped me."

"It goes badly for your other friend now too," Sheeba nods. "They think she is not loyal to them. They will punish her too."

Jade pulls her knees close and presses her forehead against them.

Trina leans over to Tori. "Andre and Robbie are dead."

"What?" Tori gasps. She's not entirely surprised, but hearing it out loud shocks her all the same.

"Beck says it was the moth bite that got Andre. Robbie was pelted with rocks," her voice cracks. "What are we going to do, Tori? We're all going to die in here."

"I…I don't know," Tori sighs.

The next day, Trina and Jade help Tori hobble out to the yard. They head over to the same corner of the yard where they have taken to hanging and Beck joins them there, albeit on his side of the fence. He is walking strangely and Tori can only imagine what they are doing to him.

She scans the yard for Cat and finds her sitting with her prison gang. She doesn't look like she's been harmed. Tori lets out a relieved sigh.

A guard hovering along the other side of the fence behind them starts making odd noises then, and they ignore him until he whispers: "Who misses their favorite teacher?"

Sikowitz is dressed in full uniform and explains that he has acquired a duck-truck and has hidden it just East of the prison near the road that will lead them over the border into Gustavia, the other country that shares this tiny island. He says that will be their best chance since no airlines are entering or leaving Yerba still.

"HEY!" a guard calls out and before they even realize what's happening, two men appear on either side of Sikowitz and batter him with batons until he is a bloody heap on the floor in front of them. They drag him away.

That is the last time any of them ever see him. 

* * *

Beck looks more and more haggard every day when he joined the girls in the yard.

Tori’s spirits flounder after Sikowitz is taken away. Jade points out that getting her foot chopped off should have been the breaking point, trying to lighten the mood in her own Jade way, but Tori just cries at that and Jade actually feels bad.

Tori starts to hyperventilate. “This is all my fault. Everything. I’m the one who arranged to come here. And Andre and Robbie are dead! Dead! And Sikowitz was our only hope and he’s probably dead now too and--” she start.

"Tori, it’s not—we all fucked up. None of us did our research. It’s not on you,” Jade reassures her.

Trina approaches them in the yard. “OK, I’m being considered for acceptance into Cat’s prison gang,” she announces.

“Why?” Jade scowls. Cat’s gang has roughed her up nearly every day since that first beating, no matter how hard she tries to avoid them. Cat tries to stop it, of course, but Jade screams at her to stay out of it. She isn’t about to have Cat get beaten for helping her. She doesn’t know how Cat has managed to avoid it thus far, but she has.

“Because it’s the biggest gang on this side and we need the protection!” Trina hisses. “Since Tori’s been hobbled, less of the inmates are scared of her. She was what kept us safe.”

Tori sniffles from where she’s sitting on the floor. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, Tori, you—” she sighs, kneeling down by her sister. “I’m gonna get us out of here, OK?”

“I’m not joining Cat’s gang,” Jade huffs.

“Psh, no duh,” Trina scoffs. “They’d never take you. But that doesn’t mean Tori and I can’t join.”

Jade scowls.

“We can’t all join the gang and just leave Jade here.”

“Tori, you’re my baby sister, I’m getting you out of here. I really don’t care about your friends. If we can save them, sure, but if not,” she shrugs. “But you and me are getting out.”

“I won’t join Cat’s gang without Jade,” Tori replies, voice firmer, the slightest hint of a spark in her eye.

Jade growls at Trina. “I’ll do just fine on my own.”

“Good luck with that,” Trina waves her off and turns to go talk to Cat’s crew again. “Anyway, there’s a chick over there, bigger than Sheeba. She has a thing for me. I bet I can flirt my way into her gang.”

“Jade, she’s right," Tori says, squeezing her arm. "We should try to make allies.”

“Then make allies.”

“I am not going without y—”

“I don’t need your pity, Vega,” Jade snaps.

“It’s the only thing that’s kept you alive so far, Jade, so I think you do.”

BOOM!

Suddenly the ground shakes violently and a loud boom causes everyone in the yard to look up. A second later, stone and metal debris is raining down on them. Everyone is in a panic, racing for cover.

Jade drags Tori along behind her, slamming her against a wall and trying to shield her while the dust and smoke clears.

BOOM!

There is shouting and gunfire and suddenly all the prisoners are running.

Trina runs up to Tori and Jade. “Come on, let’s go!”

She grabs Tori and lifts her up over her shoulders, hooking one arm behind Tori’s knees and the other grabbing her wrists and holding her in place.

“Trina!” Tori yells, but she is helpless to do anything as Trina takes off running.

Jade looks for Cat and Beck as she runs, and finds them running toward the huge space where the prison wall has been blasted open. In the back of her head, she thinks maybe running toward the place where an explosion just occurred is a bad idea, but staying put seems worse.

The guards are frantic and the alarms are screeching. Tori can’t hear anything though. Her head is pounding and full and she looks for her friends from where she is stuck, slung over her sister’s shoulders.

“Over here! Jade, Trina!” Beck calls to them and they run toward him. “Sikowitz said there was that truck just East of here.”

Trina nods. “Which way’s East?!”

Beck gestures for them to follow and they run after him, ducking into the dense jungle weeds. They run and run. The clamor of explosions fading behind them until all any of them can hear is the thudding of their shoes in the muddy ground and their ragged breaths until finally they come upon a truck under a tarp, a key already in the ignition.

“Gustavia here we come,” Beck says, sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Ooh can we stop for ice cream maybe? The prison ice cream wasn’t any good,” Cat claps as she hops into the passenger seat. Trina, Tori, and Jade clamber into the bed of the duck-truck and lie down, out of sight.

Beck speeds out onto the road, swerving to avoid collisions with other cars and people racing away from the prison.

Night falls as they cross the border. Gustavian guards have been dealing with Yerbanian refugees for weeks now and the kids are immediately directed to the American embassy.

The flight home is a somber one, and none of them are the excited kids they were when they entered the country.

Except Cat, who doesn’t seem to have changed at all.


End file.
